The Monaco Grand Prix is not just famous
because of its history and its picturesque setting, but also because
of the unique technical challenge it presents the drivers and
engineers.

Quite frankly, if the race organizers applied to run a race through
these twisty streets today for the first time, there is no way the
governing body would sanction the event: a narrow bumpy track,
peppered with road markings, drains and manhole covers does not fit
with the sanitized world of F1 in the 21st century, while the
facilities for VIP guests and, until the arrival of a new paddock last
year, the teams, cannot match the modern facilities we encounter
today.

Until a few years ago, part of a driver’s armory for Monaco, was heavy
padding to his gear-changing hand, to prevent the gearlever causing
blisters. Today, he simply flips the paddles on the back of the
steering wheel. But while the driver might have an easier time, the
gearbox itself still takes a tremendous amount of punishment at this
track.

The gearbox is the component with one of the longest lead times on the
car, in terms of its design, construction and development. It is not a
true performance item, but rather a reliability item, with performance
as a secondary function.

“The design of the box is linked pretty closely with the car’s
aerodynamics,” says Ferrari gearbox specialist, Diego Ioverno. “The
biggest challenge we face is to be able to come up with an effective
gearbox in the layout space we are allowed.”

The new rules concerning aerodynamics for 2005 have led to some major
structural changes. This comes particularly from the new floor design
which places it much closer to the gearbox. “In dealing with the
changed regulations, our aim was to have at least the same performance
from the overall car package and one of the areas that had to make
some sacrifices was the gearbox,” continues Ioverno. “It is part of
the job, we have to live with it and do our best, but it is fair to
say that we work in a compromised environment because the gearbox can
be viewed as a power wasting component located between the engine and
the wheels!”

In simple terms the bigger the gearbox, the more reliable it will be,
but size and weight are the key to performance and engineers are
always trying to lose weight in parts of the car to have the ballast
as low as possible to lower the centre of gravity.

It is no secret that the F2005 gearbox has suffered some reliability
problems early in its life and Ioverno reveals that these stemmed from
a new concept in terms of the gearbox casing. “The main change for
this year concerns the materials we use to manufacture the casing. Two
years ago, we had a titanium casing. Then last year we had a
titanium-carbon casing and this year we have increased the carbon
content and carbon is a tricky material to work with. As soon as you
use a new technology you have many lessons to learn and problems to
solve. This is the challenge we face, combined with the fact that
development time is very short.”

It might seem strange that the casing, which the casual observer might
think is just a container for the gears themselves, can cause a
problem. “But the gears and other parts move in terms of the way the
box lets them because the casing supports the internal components,”
explains Ioverno. “The difficulty of managing this situation in
engineering terms is that the metal internals and the carbon casing
operate in different thermal conditions. So we have higher stress
inside the gearbox.”

In terms of gear shifts alone, Monaco provides the severest test of
the year. “Just for the race, the driver will make 3600 gear changes
which is about 20% more than the lowest gear change circuit which is
Monza,” says Ioverno.

But the nature of the circuit adds further complications. “Monaco is a
very strange, with all the kerbs the manhole covers, the drains. The
driver never shifts in the same place in the same way, so setting up
the gearbox for Monaco is a real challenge. As the car moves over a
drain or a kerb, the entire transmission starts oscillating and if you
try and shift gear at that point, it is very difficult to operate the
shift. F1 gearboxes do not have syncromesh like a road car, so we
synchronise the shift by controlling engine revs and coordinating it
with the actuator that controls gear shift movement. So you have to be
in phase with what you want to do. If everything is oscillating you
are out of shape and risk big shocks or a bad shift or both.”

So it is a misconception that the arrival of sophisticated gear-
change technology has meant that drivers can no longer miss a gear
shift. “You have to consider that a shift lasts a few milliseconds,”
says Ioverno. “In such a small range of time, a lot of things happen.
So if you are doing a shift just as the engine takes a spike because
of a kerb, the gearshift goes out of shape. You may also be unable to
shift. Everything is on the limit and our actuators are not built to
shift gears on a truck! If the torque you have to deal with is higher
than a certain level then you can no longer achieve the gear shift.

"At the moment you shift gear, the traction control has to be off. The
two strategies cannot live together. Let’s say the driver asks for a
shift, so the system stops everything else, except safety issues and
starts the process that leads to a gear change. The process is very
fast and varies, depending on what gear shift you are making: the
length of the gear shift itself changes a lot from gear to gear. It is
less than 10 milliseconds, while the entire process averages 25-30
milliseconds.”

"The upshift only upsets the car in terms of power loss, but the
downshift is very important in terms of the stability of the car.
Because in a road car, if you go from fifth to first in one second,
imagine what would happen to the rear wheels. In an F1 car a driver
can ask to go from seventh to first in less than three seconds. Add
these complex requirements to the challenge of the Monaco track
surface and it is clear that the unglamorous gearbox plays a vital
role in the glamorous Principality."

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